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I'm your host, Greg Sargent.

Pete Hegseth's defense of the killing of two men clinging to an incapacitated boat is falling apart on multiple fronts.

Lawmakers who saw a video of this killing have shared damning details about what they witnessed,

and were now learning that the boat very well might not have been bound for the United States to begin with. All this comes as

some Republicans appear to be quietly moving away from defending Hegeseth on this, and there

are increasing signs that this video may actually end up getting released, which would almost certainly wreck Hegsseth's story even further.

We're working through exactly where we are right now with Tess Bridgman, co-editor-in-chief of the Just Security website and former national security lawyer in the Obama administration, who's been doing sharp commentary on all this.

Tess, good to have you on.

Thanks so much for having me.

So before we get into the specifics of this latest bombing, let's remind everybody of this.

The United States has killed over 80 people that Trump has designated narco-terrorists,

bombing these small boats in the Caribbean Sea on the

grounds that by smuggling drugs, the people in them are waging war on the United States.

Tess, can you just briefly recap why that's so depraved, that why it's almost certainly illegal?

The thing to keep in mind zooming out is that the United States is quite simply

not at war. There is no armed conflict going on between the United States and any criminal

gang or cartel operating in the Western Hemisphere. Transporting drugs is not an act of war. It's not a

...